Overview

Shadow of the Brood [Campaign]

Table of Contents

Introduction

Shadow of the Brood is a 10 mission Zerg campaign about Radgar and his hunt for essence and effort to bring broodmother Kelysa back. The Broodmother Kelysa was killed by Amon's hybrids while they was trying to control zerg minds, she denied. Radgar was created from the essence of the Broodmother Kelysa. He was the only one who escaped. He thought he's alone, but that's not a true....one of the Kelysa's evolution masters will join him soon!

How to install

Create folder called HotB in your Starcraft II/Maps folder. Put all downloaded content into this folder and launch launcher.

Features

New Assets

New Characters

Boss Fights

New Gameplay System

Main Characters

Missions

SotB01 - The Beginning (Finished)

SotB02 - The Coming Brood (Finished)

SotB03 - The Grasp of Enemy (Finished)

SotB04 - Needles in the Fire (Finished)

SotB05 - Eyes of Darkness (Finished)

SotB06 - Deception of Fear (Finished)

SotB07 - The Fall of the Queen (Finished)

SotB08 - Radgar's Wrath (Finished)

SotB09 - Frozen Essence (Finished)

SotB10 - Return of Lost (Finished)

Difficulty Levels

Casual: A difficulty requiring little to no multitasking and micro skills, featuring less enemies and focus on story.

Normal: A difficulty requiring minor multitasking and micro skills, featuring fewer enemies and focus on story and minor challenges.

Hard: A difficulty requiring good multitasking and micro skills, featuring a high number enemies and focus on challenges and entertainment.

Brutal: A difficulty requiring great multitasking and micro skills, featuring tremendously more enemies and heavy focus on challenge.

the quality is astounding i love the quality opening the hero and terrain design !

Played on Hard. Map1 was exceptionally well done, i love opening with the nydus worm bringing the hero.
The introduction of skills could be polished abit.
I notice you let the Queen has the Tele to Building Skills, it should be able to be used en mass, tele each Queen is a chore.

Mission 2 should let us somehow use the Queen Tele to go offense then Tele back for Zerg Timed or Random attacked, otherwise the Tele skill is just wasted.
Better yet, advise the player to build a group of 12 Queen to tele and rescue the Hydra packs -> they tele and heal the wounded to fight off pursuing ferals :D

In next update, will be spreader 2x2 placement and gives about +2 more supplies. Then add armor upgrade to Buzzergs ( I didnt want to because it will be too op then in late game ).

I'm going to add more anti-air for mission 3 and I will check the ending screen. I will too stop the UI responses for cinematics and try add some overlords for mission 1. (And take a look on blinking spreader ui)

That's all what i want to make for next update with upcoming mission 4.

Things I liked:
- The terrain is really excellent, kudos on that.
- The first two maps were really fun and the difficulty on Brutal was challanging.
- Radgar is very well executed hero unit, his second and third skills make him powerful and useful, but not overpowered. The voice acting is good, it really helps give him some character too.
- The end of mission screens give me hope that you eventually want to implement various achievements? If so, that would be awesome.
- Also, the end of mission screen looks very good.

Minor bugs and complaints:
- During some cinematics, you can hear UI responses. ("Mineral field depleted.")
- On the first map, you should really give the player at least on Overlord, so you don't start on 8/2 supply and waiting for an Overlord.
- Each map's ending screen says "The Beginning Victory" when the names are "The Coming Brood" and "The Grasp of Enemy".
- The third map's custom race's fliers don't benefit from the armor upgrade, they remain on 0 armor level.
- The third map's basic mutation and then Spreader (?) thing kept blinking forever on the UI. That's annoying.

And then there was the third map.
I see you are trying to make something new and exciting and that's to be encouraged. Still, some things to consider:
- First of all, you can just stomp your way through the map with your fliers. Most enemy units can't attack air. The objective even encourages you just mass producing them, as only they can complete it.
- Vespene gas exists for a reason. It gives a secondary constraint on unit production. If you just remove it, it will always lead to one-unit builds. Pick the most powerful unit and produce that. Consider Zerg in ladder. I want to go Mutalisks, which is gas heavy and leaves me floating minerals. So I sink minerals into Zerglings. I really think you should reintroduce gas in some unique fashion.
- Spreaders (?), the supply and power structure take up too much space. Your base ends up looking haphazard as you want to get more supply. It's also hard to tell where structures end and you can easily wall yourself in without meaning to.
- Even Radgar is gone. :(

Now, I repeat. Trying new things is fun and I will definitely play this campaign in the future, for all the reasons I said under what I enjoyed. I hope that you take my words on the third mission as constructive criticism and perhaps think about them.